Soaking Flour?

[birthbabyjunkie]

being so new, this is going to sound like a stupid set of questions, but I'm going to ask :

When SF and The Maker's Diet guy say to "soak flour" for X amount of time, are they talking about the regular kind you get at the store? We buy King Arthur WW brand and a few other kinds (my DH is a crazy dough-slingin man). Ex: in TMD , he says you can use sprouted things, freshly ground things, but anyhoo, he says to mix the water and flour and soak overnight. Or maybe he does this with yogurt. Either way, doesn't this get clumpy?

When you sprout legumes and nuts and seeds, you'll get a little growth. Do you pop those off, or leave them on as you dry them, then eat them?

Where do you get whey? SF really digs that stuff.

For yogurt, can you regular yogurt (from the regular grocery store), or can you use Stoneyfield or Horizon or something organic and get her results? :

can you soak plain-jane dried beans from the regular store?

[girligirlmom]

My youngest is allergic to 15 foods including milk so I can't tell you much about milk, nuts and seeds.

I soak my Wheat Montana Prairie Gold flour overnight in my Bosch Mixer. I usually use 6-8 TBSP fresh squeezed lemon juice(preferably organic), then fill the measuring cup with water up to the 6 cup mark all while the 8 cups of berries are grinding in my Nutrimill. This may sound confusing but it is not 6 cups of water, it is less since the lemon juice goes in first. Finally I add 12 cups of freshly ground flour(made from 8 cups of berries). I turn on my Bosch and mix it a bit an it looks like dough. The next I add honey, olive oil & salt as one mixture and yeast, a bit of honey and baking soda and water as the other mixture and then 4 more cups of flour(from 2 1/2 cups of whole wheat berries).

You could also use store bought flour. Fresh is best, store bought whole wheat is still good. If you can find a co-op or create one you can do what we do which is to get together a huge order once a year from a place like Wheat Montana and buy it in pails or put it in pails once it arrives. We also use gamma seal lids for convenience.

I use Marilyn from Urbanhomemaker.com 's recipe to make bread, cinnamon rolls, sub rolls, pizza shells that I pre bake, etc. http://articles.urbanhomemaker.com/i...hp?article=318 and here http://articles.urbanhomemaker.com/i...ex_v2&id=83&c=

The best milk or milk product to use would come from raw milk, not pasteurized or homogenized. Checkout realmilk.com for sources. If you live near the Amish seek out an organic Amish farm, that's who we use. In fact we use Miller Organic which is listed in the advertisements in WAPF's Wise Traditions.

You can make or buy whey. Miller Organics sells it as do other dairy farms.

I saw Sally speak in Lancaster this past Saturday to what she called her biggest audience. Last time I saw her 2 years was at Rutgers in NJ, my introduction to WAPF and TFs. Every time I have seen her I learn something new, in fact I learn a lot more.

I did sprout wheat a couple of times but I find soaking an easier process. I just dried my wheat with the little tails left on and then ground them like that.

I do not know about the yogurt since ds4 is allergic and I am still nursing him but it should work. It's not the best for you and store bought milk, yogurt, etc. even organic is still made from pasteurized milk which is lower in nutrients (cows not on pasture and not in sunshine), higher risk of pathogens since pathogens are normal on those farms and expected to be "pasteurized out" and what's also key is it is missing key enzymes for digestion and health. Can you tell I just saw Mark McAfee, the farmer/owner of Organic Pastures in Callifornia, speak at Rutgers 2 weeks ago?

[birthbabyjunkie]

And the flour doesn't get clumpy? We haven't any experience with fresh-ground, that will be a while before that can happen, but we do have the regular flour. I will look into the wheat. We are in VA...
a friend just directed me to the urban homemaker, so I will spend more time there.

[girligirlmom]

No it gets dough like since I mix it together the night before. The key is that I do not soak all of the flour, only about 2/3 to 3/4 of it. Technically I soak 12 cups (made from 8 cups of berries) and do not soak 4 cups (made from 2 and 1/2 cups of berries). That is enough for me to go from slight itchy skin to nothing. Unsoaked bread makes me slightly itchy sometimes but soaked bread even just the 2/3 and I am absolutely fine every single time. My ds4 was allergic to wheat until January 2007 so I was off of all wheat for 2 and a half years. When I went back on wheat I would sometimes feel itchy skin but not when I ate sprouted or soaked wheat.

The next day I heat the 1/4-1/2 cup of water to 120 F and add the yeast, baking soda and honey. Next I heat the honey, oil, and salt to 120 F. In the winter my raw honey is quite hard so heating helps me to mix it and and heating all of it helps the dough get warmer quicker which it needs to rise. I turn on my Bosch for about 10 minutes and when it's done I have the most elastic and easy to work with dough.

Next I do a double rise. Some say it is not necessary but my whole wheat is so light b/c of the Prairie Gold Berries, the soaking and the double rise that many people think my bread is half white/half whole wheat.

I put half of it in my Excalibur to rise and the other half I put in my microwave (which I do not turn on nor use anymore but it sits above the stove). Many bread days I also make stock so the heat from the stock helps that dough rise. After an hour I take it out, shape it, and then let it rise in those forms or shape for about half an hour or until it reaches the top of the bread pan and then I bake it.

I do everything by the weight of the dough to get even rolls and loaves. In my Pampered chef Bread Pans I use 1 and 1/2 lbs. My rolls are 3 - 3.5 oz. My pizza "shells" are 13 oz and shaped to fit into a very large zip lock bag that goes in my freezer. I use 1 and 1/2 lbs (but sometimes just 1 lb) for my cinnamon rolls. I just bought an Escali digital scale that goes up to 11 lbs from Amazon.

Right now I use Stoneware for all of my bread and dough baking but I am considering getting the 8" black tins for baking loaves from Urbanhomemaker.com. I bake at 350F (best for my oven which runs hot compared to recipes) and I use a digital thermometer with an alarm to tell me when my bread is finished. I do not put it in until after 20 minutes for my loaves and after 12 minutes for my rolls or there will be a gaping hole in the middle of the loaf or roll. I take my bread up to 203 F.

[girligirlmom]

double post. Sorry!

[birthbabyjunkie]

Thanks for all the explanation, girligirl! (note about PC stones - i was a PC lady for 4 years and my house is bedecked in stoneware! i love that stuff -- TF and didn't know it!) So if I understand you correctly (which is totally possible that i don't!), you took 12 cups of your flour, soaked 8 cups of it over night (leaving that other 4 cups unsoaked).
Next day, you combine the "wet" and dry ingredients. The Bosch, is that a bread machine? What is Excalibur (I am assuming you do not wield a sword in the face of menacing flour, right?)
I would like to try this with our flour. It won't be fresh, it will be King Arthur WW flour. What about cake flour, or unbleach white flour. Are all these soakable? I am sure they are gooey-able, and funky-able, but are they edible?
Now, I am REALLY off to urban homemaker!

[girligirlmom]

I knew I might confuse you! I take 8 cups of whole wheat berries and grind them in my Nutrimill which yields 12 cups of flour since when you grind into flour the volume increases. Next day I take 2.5 cups of whole wheat berries and grind them which yields 4 cups of flour.

So once you are comfortable making bread you would soak 12 cups and then add 4 the next day, which yields 5-6 loaves(less if using the larger Pampered Chef loaf pans). To start out I would suggest you use a smaller amount that makes one or two loaves at a time just until you are comfortable.

I choose to make this much at once now but when I started trying to make bread I used this recipe from Urbanhomemaker or a similar one my friend shared:

http://articles.urbanhomemaker.com/i...ex_v2&id=83&c=

Hand Method: (yields 2 loaves)

1/3 C honey
1/3 C oil
2 1/2 C Warm Water
1 1/2 TB Saf Instant Yeast
2 1/2 tsp Real Salt
6-7 C Fresh whole wheat flour

I skipped the dough enhancer since it contains soy and ds4 is allergic to soy.

Next I moved on to the soaking method and then increased the volume. I wanted to start small so when I burned the bread using my Pyrex glass loaf pan I wasn't losing too much(yes this happened twice). I could not get the loaves to work until I got my stoneware! I now know I could've turned down my oven so the inside would cook through but the outside would not burn.

I have noticed that the Amish make bread with Lard so I may try that too. Lard from pastured pigs contains many nutrients that are not in Olive Oil.

Excalibur is a dehydrator. http://www.excaliburdehydrator.com/ I can put my dough into it to rise but I could not do this with a round dehydrator so I sold my round one and bought the Excalibur.

Bosch is a Mixer like a Kitchenaid, but a Kitchenaid cannot make 5-6 loaves or the equivalent of whole wheat dough while the Bosch (and one other mixer that I know of) can. I have an older version of this one: http://www.urbanhomemaker.com/produc...idCategory=225

Some people realistically cannot make bread every week like I do with a Bosch so instead they buy a breadmaker like this one:
http://www.urbanhomemaker.com/Produc...idproduct=1387 which makes one loaf at a time.

Before you go out and buy any appliances, start by making bread by hand at home with the best store bought flour. then try soaking it and compare. Only after doing this for about a month or at least a few weeks should you consider the expense of a machine. What should you get first? Depends. If you can get berries then you will need a Nutrimill if you want fresh flour. If you can only get store bought flour then consider a breadmaker or a Mixer but soak your bread.

Take baby steps and see how you feel about adding this to your life. It can be overwhelming if you feel you HAVE to make bread every day or every week but you don't want to. I stopped making bread from Nov 1st to mid January due to life, illness and stress. Store bought is just not the same so I am now making it when I can and trying to freeze some for the times when I cannot fit it in.

Christina